Posts
This weekend Canberra is hosting a Start-up Camp, a three day event where entrepreneurs form teams and develop new online business concepts.
This type of event could be an opportunity for government to tap into smart and skilled people, gathering and testing new ideas.
In this camp there are six projects underway, as listed below:
itubecover.com - get your cool environmentally-friendly protective iPhone cover entirely made from recycled materials
mywardrobe.me - can't decide an outfit...take the easy option...browse through your wardrobe online
thumbtips.com.au - any topic, any time, the more controversial the better, you give it a thumbs up or a thumbs down
ilickit.com - product reviews made interesting, lick 'em or flick 'em with ilickit.com!
isplit.com.au - after world peace, surely this is needed. No one in your circle will ever dare not pay their share again
checkthishome.net - heading to Oz from overseas for a long stay...why not get the low-down on where you're going to stay ahead of them.
Saturday, August 14, 2010
Tapping into Canberra's entrepreneurial community | Tweet |
What I'm reading on Gov2.0 today.... | Tweet |
I read constantly to keep up-to-date with the Gov 2.0 and Web 2.0 world, so I thought I'd publish a list of what I've read today based on the pages I have open currently in my web browser.
Global Gov 2.0 - "Generation GovLoop" Provoking Profound Change?
Highlights how changes in public service demographics will change how public services operate. As Baby Boomers and Veterans retire, their Generation X and Y replacements will place higher value on collaboration and engagement particularly via social media.
Govts need well-defined social media strategy
More and more Government agencies are using social media to communicate and engage with the public. However they haven't always put the strategies in place to use these channels most effectively. These agencies would not launch a TV campaign without a well-thought out strategy, so why would they do so for social media. They need to establish clear, well-defined social media strategies in order to use social media channels appropriately and to manage potential issues.
An Executive′s Guide To Social Media
The personality type of many executives disinclines them to use social media. They tend to be highly-driven introverts, who value hard work over instant success. They also tend to develop healthy egos and place enormous value on reputation, avoiding channels which could damage their own standing in front of their peers.
Therefore they need to be approached in the right way to become interested in online channels. Key topics to sell to them are unfiltered feedback (often they find it hard to get the truth from scared underlings), the ability to engage authentically and tell their organisation's story (as they are proud of their organisation), to save money (as online can deliver better returns for less cost), accountability (statistics).
White House uses LinkedIn for policy discussion
The US government has begun using LinkedIn as another online social network for discussions with its citizens.
A Victory for Social Media: Inside the Election of Colombia's New President
The new Colombian President successfully used social media to overcome a 12 point deficit and win the last Presidential election through effective online engagement. A lesson for other political parties seeking election.
Gov 2.0 as means not end
Sometimes advocates of Gov 2.0, or those new to the area, forget that the approach is designed to serve a purpose, it is not a purpose in its own right. It can also be used to facilitate different things - greater systems transparency, improved engagement with citizens and better cost controls - depending on the needs of the state.
GetUp! wins again in online vote case
In a majority decision, the Federal Court has ruled that it is legal for Australians to enrol online and that the AEC's interpretation of 'sign' as requiring a paper signature is flawed. This opens the door to online voter enrolment across Australia - provided the AEC can place systems in place to facilitate this.
"Knowledge is a mashup" - Dig into the Smithsonian Commons and you'll find Gov 2.0 in action.
This article outlines the activities going on at the Smithsonian to open up its entire catalogue to online access, thoroughly cross-referenced and indexed, with user-based tags and associations permitted via an open data approach. Collections can also be shared to other websites and social networks, promoting the greatest possible reach for the collection - an excellent example of Gov 2.0 in action.
An investigation of Emotional Intelligence and the use of Online Social Media tools in organisations (#EISM Report)
An Australian report looking at the impacts of Emotional Intelligence levels and online communication on each other.
Five Rules For How To Make Things Go Viral (TCTV)
You can't predict what will go viral, but you can make choices that improve the chances. This article outlines five 'rules' which can be applied to any online content to help encourage viral behaviour.
Open Government Data Principles
These eight principles provide an excellent framework for government data openness. They are being applied more and more widely in the US and other countries - although have not received wide attention in Australia yet.
Plenary: Data into Action
This is the online record of a Plenary session covering examples of how Gov 2.0 has been successfully put into practice in a variety of environments.
The Value of Transparency Is At The Boundary between Government and Society
This post covers how more transparency doesn't necessarily mean better governance. Governments must work interactively and constructively with citizens, releasing the right information to support collective problem solving and better solutions.
Governments and e-participation programs: A study of the challenges faced by institutional projects
From the synopsis:
This paper examines the difficulties faced by government projects aimed at fostering citizens’ political participation by using the Internet. After presenting the participatory tools found on two institutional Web sites (the Brazilian Presidency and the House of Representatives), I examine how the constraints pointed out by a relevant part of the literature in e–participation are reflected in such initiatives. Promoting online participation needs more than providing communication resources, since civic culture and other issues are still key factors in influencing our patterns of political involvement. A participatory use of digital tools depends more on circumstances, such as institutional willingness, than on technical mechanisms available.
Employees-First, Citizen-Second: The Best Route to Open Government
This post discusses the need to engage and involve government employees in open government and social media initiatives in order to improve organisational capability and deliver better outcomes for citizens. Internal collaboration first, public consultation second.
And Of Course, Here’s The Twitter Movie Trailer
A community-created trailer for a Twitter movie - and linking to a similar trailer for a YouTube movie. While more humour than work, these trailers - and the trailer for the real movie "The Social Network" provide insights into how people view and use these services in the real world.
Thursday, August 12, 2010
Victoria releases best-practice Gov 2.0 Action Plan | Tweet |
Victoria has maintained its lead over other Australian states in the adoption of Government 2.0 through today's release of the Government 2.0 Action Plan - Victoria.
The Plan outlines four priority areas for Gov 2.0:
- Driving adoption in the VPS > Leadership
- Engaging communities and citizens > Participation
- Opening up government > Transparency
- Building capability > Performance
With 14 initiaitves under these priorities, the plan was devised using extensive consultation and a wiki-based approach, engaging a wide range of stakeholders across government.
This approach, previously used in New Zealand, the US and the United Kingdom, has proven effective in generating significant engagement and support for the eventuating plan.
Rather than a 'big bang' approach - as used for many government initiatives, the Plan state that:
Our approach to implementation is think big, start small and scale fast.
In my view, Victoria's Gov 2.0 Action Plan is an example of best practice in how to prepare to systematically embed Government 2.0 techniques and tools into a government, taking the necessary steps to reform public sector culture, build capability, engage proactively and innovate iteratively to deliver the best outcomes for citizens.
I believe that the effective execution of this Action Plan, ahead of Gov 2.0 efforts in other states, will give Victoria a substantial first-mover economic advantage, positioning the state as more innovative and better equipped to service citizens and businesses in the 21st Century.
Targeting Gov 2.0 apps development - US government combating child obesity with Apps for Healthy Kids | Tweet |
The mash-up (or Apps) competitions we've seen in Australia thus far have been broad and largely untargeted. Governments have released a bunch of public sector datasets and invited developers to create a bunch of applications related to that data for their jurisdiction, but without a highly specific goal or purpose in mind, other than creating applications that add value to the data.
The US, which leads Australia in this area of Gov 2.0, initially took a similar approach. However it has now moved to a new level - Apps competitions focused on individual campaigns, themes and issues.
One such example is the Apps for Healthy Kids competition which, quoting from its website is,
part of First Lady Michelle Obama’s Let’s Move! campaign to end childhood obesity within a generation. Apps for Healthy Kids challenges software developers, game designers, students, and other innovators to develop fun and engaging software tools and games that drive children, especially “tweens” (ages 9-12) – directly or through their parents – to eat better and be more physically active.
The competition, which has received over 90 entries, requires developers to use a specific government dataset of information to develop a game or activity focused on a specific audience and campaign goal.
The prize money, $60,000, is a fraction of what it could cost a government Department to develop this many concepts to production level.
The winning entry will be used by the government for 12 months at no license cost and then reverts to the entrant's control - perhaps to become a saleable product or even be licensed by the government for ongoing use.
Besides the value of the winning application, there is substantial public relations value in holding the competition in the first place. It raises awareness of the issue, engaging people in either creating and voting for entries, or simply supporting the initiative through the 'challenge supporters' mechanism.
This type of targeted crowd sourcing approach has many different potential applications for governments from local through to federal levels. Many different issues and campaigns could provide fertile ground for these types of apps competitions.
Note that despite our current lack of targeted apps competitions, Australia isn't that far behind the US in crowd sourcing. There have been examples of online video competitions, design competitions and other approaches designed to encourage the community to engage with and produce content that can be used for the public good.
Below is the introductory video for Apps for Healthy Kids:
Wednesday, August 11, 2010
Does Gov 2.0 require government leadership or participation? | Tweet |
This post is in reflection to a post by Nicholas Gruen over at Club Troppo entitled, What Coalition Politicians ‘get’ Government 2.0?
For me the post triggered a broader question - does Gov 2.0 require government leadership or participation?
I think examples from both Australia and overseas demonstrate that the mass enablement of societies via the internet can - and does - proceed without government leadership, encouragement, involvement and even in face of significant political and public sector resistance.
The Government 2.0 movement did not begin as a government policy or program. The concept was not created by politicians or public servants. Instead it arose from the application of Web 2.0 techniques and technologies to the process of governance.
Long before any 'Gov 2.0' websites or applications existed, the public in many countries had already begun using the internet's capability to give every citizen a town hall platform, printing press and television station to discuss matters related to government.
Online content was generated, followed by robust discussions, on areas related to national and state governance - party political policies, the interpretation of laws and the conduct of politicians, government agencies and public servants.
This rise of citizen content creation, participation and online discourse around the world has prompted greater public awareness and engagement with governments of all persuasions, from robust democracies to totalitarian dictatorships.
Examples of this in action already abound - the role of Twitter in Iranian Presidential election, the political impact of blogging across the Middle-East, the use of mobile phones to expose election fraud in Nigeria, the backlash against a Chinese government proposal to force online forum participants to use their real identities, the rise of independent tools to monitor parliamentary discussions in the UK and Australia and the role of social media in the 2008 US Presidential election.
This Gov 2.0 activity has begun forcing governments to (willingly or not) adapt their own processes to cater for more educated, publicly visible and active citizenry.
Australia, with a robust democracy and high average incomes, is if anything in less need of Government 2.0 than many other nations. We already have strong and stable institutions, the rule of law, low levels of corruption, an independent media and citizens who, for the most part, lead comfortable 'middle-class' lifestyles.
Even so we have seen Gov 2.0 sites outside of government agencies flourish in the last two years. I personally count at least 50 independent websites involved with aspects of Gov 2.0 engagement (for example OpenAustralia, Open Forum, OurSay, Australia2, Planning Alerts, BuzzElection, TweetMP, The National Forum, Club Troppo and this list (in comments) of Australian political blogs - most of which allow community comment).
It has also become accepted internationally that freeing up access to a range of public sector information provides a massive boost to the bottom line economy of nations, with New Zealand being the latest nation to begin making its data more usable online.
Therefore, in my view, Gov 2.0 does not need government leadership - or even a level of support or participation - to continue growing, in Australia or around the world.
Instead we need to ask a few more specific questions related to the cost and risks where governments do not actively encourage, support or actually oppose Gov 2.0 adoption.
- What will be the economic cost of inactivity on the Gov 2.0 front?
- What will be the political and reputational costs of failing to upskill either or both public services and political arms of governments in the effective application of Gov 2.0 techniques?
- How will Gov 2.0 inactivity impact on international competitiveness, where other nations embed Gov 2.0 in their governance systems?
These questions have, as yet, not been explored extensively in Australia - or really elsewhere in the world. As the Gov 2.0 movement is still young it is difficult to find evidence of long-term value - increased public engagement in democratic institutions, public value or cost savings.
However the growth in Gov 2.0 around the world demonstrates, at least to me, that there has been significant public value created, even if governments currently lack the tools and techniques to accurately measure it.
